Write down this name because you will hear about it again. The young Slovak artist Evelyn Bencicova exhibits for the first time in Italy, at c | e contemporary in Milan. Class 92, studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Vienna,specializes in photography and art direction.
The works of this visual story-teller, as she likes to define herself, are not mere photographs: she experiments with different media through which she tells her personal vision of the world. In them, conceptual research meets visual research, giving rise to refined and aesthetically appealing settings.
The artist creates illusions based on reality and invites us into the secret labyrinth of his mind where every detail hides a deeper meaning than what it appears to be in appearance. His images composed of soft, faded, neutral colors, sometimes spotted by flashes, the subjects' poses in a presence - studied absence and the atmosphere of these compositions give the feeling of being in front of surreal images, which then realizes not being very far from everyday life.
Artificial Tears
It is the 2017 series with which the exhibition begins. In this project the artist wonders what the future of artificial intelligence will be, highlighting questions such as the dependence, morality and prejudices that mankind places on this theme, between its creative power and the fear of substitution . Evelyn wonders in particular about what distinguishes the man from the car. Difficult to define who this model is. The sentiment you feel from these works is being outsiders in a strange but at the same time familiar world in which you are forced to follow absurd rules. A meaningless world. The proposed scenarios do not necessarily show a future in which the machine behaves like man, but rather, or at the same time, a world in which the human being acts like an automaton.
Asymptote
In the second series on display, "Asymptote", we find many features related to Evelyn's surreal and hypnotic vision, such as the search for fascinating spaces, the rigorously geometric structure of the images, the choice of mysterious places and the use of cold colors and bruises. The series was created in architectural structures originating from the socialist era as the work is a personal interpretation of life in Czechoslovakia of the time. In this series past and present, memory and reality merge. In this case Evelyn studies the current state of society and its values. The artist wants to highlight how there are many points in common between past and present and how each period has to do with the same demons that recur under other guises. The series sheds light on the idea of conformism and exhaustion experienced by the characters, who always present themselves in the same poses and with faces hidden by masks to represent the psychological pressure that society exerts
on the individual to make it homologated.
Video
A watershed between the two series is the fashion film “Asymptote” (2016), co-created by Evelyn with Adam Csoka Keller and Arielle Esther, a hypnotic and hermetic video in which the photographic works of the Asymptote series by Evelyn Bencicova come to life. The “Artificial Tears” series set in a possible future and the “Asymptote” series linked instead to a confrontation with the past face each other in the contemporary spaces giving life to a surreal and hypnotic exhibition. Aseptic environments and colors, empty spaces, raw atmospheres, in which the subjects find themselves in indecipherable situations are just some of the elements that characterize Evelyn’s work that can only enchant the viewer.
Ecce Homo
To conclude this visionary exhibition some images from the "Ecce Homo" series in which naked bodies appear in unnatural poses creating geometric, almost
architectural structures. Images in which the human being turns into an object and becomes part of the surrounding furniture. Evelyn tells us about human fragility in a way that is absolutely not obvious. Bare bodies in equally bare environments whose faces are never shown, in order to remain generic characters in which
everyone can identify with. The series sheds light on man's instinct to conform and follow the prevailing opinions / actions in society. The individual thus loses
his identity and his personal space is reduced to a minimum.